Attribution: Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

I am Elizabeth (Libby) Tilley and I have recently taken early retirement from the University of Cambridge to focus on developing some freelance projects, supporting the CILIP professional qualifications programme, and having more time for my homelife activities!

Over the next 6-9 months I will be undertaking a project for LIRG who have identified the need to develop a rationale for how and where to focus limited research funding supporting library practitioners across the UK.

The project will ask:

• What future developments will libraries in the UK need to significantly engage with, in the next ten years?
• Which of these areas are most critical for us to understand and require in-depth focused research to support this (and thus benefit from funding)?

The key purpose of the research is to provide a clear indication of the research focus for libraries for the future. It is anticipated that this would support coalescence of activity in critical areas for the LIS community.

The key methodology for the research will be based on a Modified-Delphi Card Sorting method (Paul, 2008). An initial step will be to formulate a list of topics that will inform the Delphi Card Sorting activity, and this is already underway through exploring the conference programmes of LIS sectors and professions for 2023 and for those already available, the call for papers for 2024. This is necessarily limiting but the critical issues librarianship is facing is regularly highlighted through the modern conference.

Where are the boundaries? Where do we stop exploring conference themes and papers? The key criteria for conference inclusion comes down to questioning whether it adds to a specific sector of librarianship e.g., school libraries, etc or whether it expands our horizons to include all areas of the UK. This then is the first challenge of the research: developing content for the Delphi Day. The initial lists will be further added to and modified through a series of semi-structured interviews which will take place November-January.

Reflecting on the first few weeks engaging with the project:

• There are exciting things happening and questions being asked about so many distinct aspects of librarianship in all sectors. I would like to start my career all over again!
• There are conferences I was not aware of, and I am reaping the benefit of meeting with three academic and practitioner members of LIRG who are supporting this project

What next?

• Completing the conference delving and initial topic list creation
• Contacting colleagues across the UK to support the further development of the topic list
• Writing a short literature review to support the project
• Preparing the Delphi Card-sorting day for the New Year

If you want to contact me about the project, use:  elizabeth.tilley@cantab.net

Libby Tilley

For an update of project and the opportunity to get involved in the next stage of the research please see the second blog post 

Paul, C.L. (2008) ‘A Modified Delphi Approach to a New Card Sorting Methodology’, Journal of User Experience, 4(1), pp. 7–30.